1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus having the function of displaying a character in an enlarged form, and a program storage medium for storing a program used for realizing it or, in particular, to an information processing apparatus capable of easily visualizing the display contents and a program storage medium for storing the program used for realizing it.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, information processing apparatuses as personal computers and word processors have become widely used even by visually-handicapped persons and aged persons. These users often complain that the characters and pictures on the screen are so small that they cannot be easily seen. The demand for an increased size of characters and pictures on display is thus increasing.
With this situation as a background, software for displaying a normal screen in an enlarged form has been put into practice. The mere enlarged display on the screen, however, is accompanied by a difficulty in visualizing the overall layout due to the insufficient amount of data that is displayed. In view of this, in order to assure operating ease, a configuration is required whereby information on the normal screen can be easily visualized even in an enlarged display area on the screen.
In the case where a window is opened while the characters on the screen are being enlarged at a designated magnification rate in the conventional information processing apparatuses, the particular window is enlarged and displayed at the same magnification rate as the screen.
When scrolling is requested of the window displayed in an enlarged form this way, the window is scrolled according to the same scrolling process as before enlargement.
After completion of a process to display the window in an enlarged form, a request for erasure, if any, is met by erasing the window on the screen as of the time of the request.
The above-mentioned conventional apparatuses pose the problem that the user cannot recognize the contents of the display easily. The problem will be specifically described below.
In an information processing apparatus, a window (dialog box) may be displayed in response to entry of a character in a normal form, that is in a not enlarged form, as shown in FIGS. 13A, 13B.
In such a case, the conventional configuration shown in FIG. 14A for displaying a window at the same magnification rate as at the time of character entry sometimes undesirably causes only a portion of each character to be displayed within the window, as shown in FIG. 14B.
When a character is entered, it is enough to recognize only the neighborhood of the character. In the case of displaying a window, on the other hand, it would be more convenient if the contents displayed in the window could be recognized. The problem of the prior art, however, is that what is displayed in the window cannot be easily recognized by the user.
Also, an information processing apparatus may display a window having a character considerably smaller in size than the character entered for display without any enlargement.
The conventional configuration for displaying a window at the same magnification rate as a character entered encounters the problem that each character in the window is still small and hard to view, even after the window is enlarged as shown in FIG. 15B, when the user is desirous of viewing the screen enlarged at the character magnification rate as shown in FIG. 15A.
Further, in the conventional configurations which handles a request for scrolling a window displayed in an enlarged form by the same scrolling process as before enlargement as shown in FIGS. 16A to 16E, the user may erroneously continue to scroll out of the window as shown in FIG. 16E. In such a case, the user is required to search for the window by manual operation. Because of the whole image of an enlarged display on a screen is difficult to visualize, this manual operation becomes very troublesome. Also, assume that a request for erasing a window is issued after the required process is complete on the window displayed in an enlarged form as shown in FIGS. 17A to 17C. The configuration of erasing the window on the screen as of the time of the request poses no problem when the window is not enlarged as the user can restore the original screen to coincide with the original working screen, as shown in FIG. 17C. In the case where the window is displayed in an enlarged form as shown in FIGS. 18A to 18C, however, the user is unable to restore the original working screen as shown in FIG. 18C. The user is thus required to restore the original display condition by very troublesome manual work.
As described above, the conventional information processing apparatuses have the problem that the user cannot easily recognize the contents displayed in an enlarged form.